Lisa is a professional dog walker in San Francisco, serving the high end clients of Pacific Heights.  She spends a lot of time bagging puppy poop and screaming “Come baaack” to some mutt who’s disappeared into the underbrush.  Lisa grew up in Darien,Connecticut with a circus-worthy menagerie; a Golden Retriever, two fat and lazyBasset Hounds, cats, rabbits and ducks who produced too quickly to count, a horse who was often found inside the house, and a goat who preferred to sleep in the car; thus she developed a passion for animals along with a wicked sense of humor.

Her family of mostly four legged misfits, didn’t exactly blend in with the typical Darien lifestyle of manicured lawns, country clubs and mothers who never passed gas, so when she was 14, her mother moved the family to Pacific Palisades, CA.  The laid back beach lifestyle of sex, drugs and rock and roll proved irresistible to Lisa and her mother wisely shipped her off to boarding school in Colorado and eventually the University of Colorado where she learned that if you speed you get a ticket.  If you spend your money on beer instead of paying your speeding ticket you get arrested.  If you get jailed enough times by the same officer, he attends your graduation.  Yes, Lisa did become an alumnus with a business degree in commercial recreation.  And yes, that really is a major.

Following graduation, Lisa had a 12 year successful sports marketing and promotions career working for the University of Colorado Athletic department, the Buffalo Bison’s baseball team, World University Games, World Cup Soccer 1994 and finishing up with a consulting job for a Major League Soccer team, the San Jose Clash.

In 1995, as her friends headed to work the Olympics in Atlanta, Lisa launched her dog walking business, Dog Adventures.  She dreamed of walking her tail-waggers in beautiful places; instead she ended up trying to keep them from rolling in dead animals,stealing sandwiches, and assorted other mongrel chaos.  The one boyfriend she could keep during this period was a pooch walker, too, who after their break-up decided robbing banks was more lucrative.  He was later arrested by the FBI as the Ho Hum Bandit because he appeared so bored.

Lisa and her company of bow-wows mistakenly was featured on CNN which attracted so much popularity, the segment was extended for four more days.

After 20 years on the canine tour, Lisa also has met every breed of human weirdo; from the naked guy wanting to play Frisbee with the Retrievers, to the woman picking up imaginary poop.  Realizing she needed other witnesses to the insanity, she started Stories from the Barkside blog.

She and her husband Milo reside in Mill Valley, CA with their own basketball team of five boys, a droopy eyed Basset hound, a Golden Retriever who has the canine version of Pica (an eating disorder of consuming inanimate objects with no nutritional value), and two cats.  She also owns a retired horse who lives in Petaluma, CA.  As for the goat who enjoyed sleeping in cars, she lived out her final days on a cannabis farm in Chico.